Poll of the Day > I sorta miss early internet, and think its better than todays.

(+) Yeah! (+)

Yahoo Games, Newgrounds, chat rooms, the lot. I mean I don't miss the porn or the internet speeds. But I am confident in other aspects I liked it a lot more than what the internet is today.

I do miss Newgrounds but none of that other shit.

Yes - generally speaking the internet was better around 97-2003.

You had to somewhat know what you were doing to be online. Now, any rube can get online.

Eternal September

These damn normies taking over the internet.

if you think it's bad, it is still getting worse.

even early Reddit was good compared to what we have now. it's become more like a collection of advertiser friendly Facebook groups.

Geocities webpages

I would say streaming services like Netflix / HBO are the only things early internet is lacking

The Internet was so nice before the normies took it over >={}

Is it a music file? A virus? Porn? A snuff film? Download the file and find out!

I do miss Yahoo games and Hoyle card games online.

I miss the mid 00s sweet spot too. I try to take a morbid interest in the gradual deterioration though, keeps it a little interesting as opposed to just being depressing.

Newgrounds isn't gone.

I feel like people on Usenet were more intelligent than people on later message boards. Maybe they were just as angry, but at least they sounded like they knew what they were talking about.

Early internet was cool in the sense it was new and kind of like a wild west...though I am talking say from 1993/4/5...which is when I started, so I don't know about true early internet in its actual infancy.

but it was neat before everything became "the same" and more "normie" Some bad(slow ass internet, pages would take minutes to load, etc) but a lot of good as well. Overall, I'd take a mix of both, but I can't remember a ton about early internet to say if I really want some of that coming back.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Is it a music file? A virus? Porn? A snuff film? Download the file and find out!

If the file is mere KB large...you betcha it's shady AF

SinisterSlay posted...

Newgrounds isn't gone.

Neither is Myspace, and yet

I was randomly thinking of this earlier lol Net 1.0 was just random ass stuff and porn, way less toxic. "Mr T Ate My Balls" was the height of humor.

Ah yes...Limewire too. It took like 4 hours just to download one God damn song I tell you!

good old days of the world wide web when in 1998-2000 where yahoo's personal ads were free and hotmail had free personal ads too.

that and IGN had alot of stuff such as gamesages cheats, IGN Filmforce mailbag, babe of the day etc.

Plus gamefaqs or IGN had a live chat thing for resident evil nemesis back then 1998 or 1999

acesxhigh posted...

early Reddit was good compared to what we have now.

old.reddit and get an adblocker; your welcome. Might even still be an option in settings to force old reddit. I never switched over to nureddit, the closest I get to using nureddit is modmail.

Blightzkrieg posted...

Is it a music file? A virus? Porn? A snuff film? Download the file and find out!

Oh, Yeah! Those were the days!

OmegaM posted...

I feel like people on Usenet were more intelligent than people on later message boards.

Because they actually knew how to use a computer, shit started going downhill when AOL started spamming their free trial disks to everyone and their mother.

I just typed in the url for a porn / conspiracy "news" site from back in the day, lands on a for sale splash page offering the domain for $7k

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQE66WA2s-A

I miss the 90s internet where everything was run by hobbyists rather than big corporations.

I hated dial up.

You the man now dog

darkknight109 posted...

I miss the 90s internet where everything was run by hobbyists rather than big corporations.

Seriously that's the worst thing about the internet today. Everybody's being corralled into the little internet ecosystems of Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Facebook with their devices, apps, and services, so you can become dependent and continue to feed those corporations money. Even if you don't pay them directly they're still making money from you while convincing you you need them.

11110111011 posted...

Yes - generally speaking the internet was better around 97-2003.

You had to somewhat know what you were doing to be online. Now, any rube can get online.

Nah at least 2005.

KodyKeir posted...

Because they actually knew how to use a computer, shit started going downhill when AOL started spamming their free trial disks to everyone and their mother.

We use to throw those at each other in junior high.

I miss how much more personalized social media used to be. Maybe you needed to learn some html but myspace, livejournal, tumblr, etc. profiles all appeared so much more customizable and distinct compared to how ubiquitous popular sites look nowadays

When I think older internet I think of when random ass people made their own sites with shit like angelfire usually fan pages. I was like 7 or 8 and had one for hulk hogan lol

captpackrat posted...

Eternal September

Hey, I'm the one who's supposed to keep bringing that up. Stop stealing other people's lines!

Early YouTube was the shit

mooreandrew58 posted...

When I think older internet I think of when random ass people made their own sites with shit like angelfire usually fan pages. I was like 7 or 8 and had one for hulk hogan lol

I remember one site where most of the content was lost because of a crash on their part. Luckily Archive.org had most of it backed up.

I remember finding out about Final Fantasy 2, 3, and 5 from some random GeoCities site back in 98 after I finished Final Fantasy 7. I was just like "wait a minute, last game I remember was 3, where are 4, 5, and 6?" and that is what got me into emulation.

Generally the internet is worse when people tie their irl selves to it. What was a social space in a vacuum has been excessively commercialised and sanitised in more and more insidious ways to the point it's barely recognisable.

AltOmega2 posted...

Early YouTube was the shit

Yep, especially the Youtube Poops and the content was mostly uncut, you can't even mention certain diseases or even say kill or die in some cases without getting demonetized or your video taken down.

hypnox posted...

Yahoo Games, Newgrounds, chat rooms, the lot. I mean I don't miss the porn or the internet speeds. But I am confident in other aspects I liked it a lot more than what the internet is today.

Good news @hypnox Newgrounds is still around, and it's no longer flooded with the bigotry that plagued the site back in the 00's.

It's coincidentally got some really good ADULT games on the site as well.

Tell me about Yahoo Games. What was it like?

Dikitain posted...

I remember finding out about Final Fantasy 2, 3, and 5 from some random GeoCities site back in 98 after I finished Final Fantasy 7. I was just like "wait a minute, last game I remember was 3, where are 4, 5, and 6?" and that is what got me into emulation.

And thankfully emulation is so much more easier to find, safer too!

Newgrounds had their own Flash version of Portal, and it was pretty good.

I remember a guy in England that had access to the Japanese editions of Dragon Ball and was translating it on his site, but hosting images was prohibitively expensive so he wrote the entire series out (OG through Z and into GT) so the first time I read Dragon Ball was through him.

Well, just like then, the more rural areas are still being ignored while cities get faster internet. I read a lot of good books waiting for a single page to load on dial-up. That Hampster Dance was SO worth it though!

I used to download 3 minute linkin park music videos on Kazaa and it would take all day to download

Fierce_Deity_08 posted...

That Hampster Dance was SO worth it though!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUS2ZFii14w

EchoBaz posted...

And thankfully emulation is so much more easier to find, safer too!

Not really. All the good sites were shut down ages ago.

FrozenBananas posted...

I used to download 3 minute linkin park music videos on Kazaa and it would take all day to download

IRC for me in the early 2000s. Downloaded mostly old cartoons and games. It was fun watching the progress bars. Then I got high speed internet.

Remember TV Links

Metalsonic66 posted...

Remember TV Links

Oh right. They did nothing wrong since nothing was hosted directly.

Revelation34 posted...

Not really. All the good sites were shut down ages ago.

And were replaced with better ones!

Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour is still around, though the site is slightly broken. (You have to click on the index.shtml file to make the pages work correctly.) http://www.kibo.com/photos/index.shtml

The Chronicles of George is still available. https://www.chroniclesofgeorge.com/

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is still being updated! http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html

Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches (last updated 1994) https://www.pmichaud.com/toast/

Random Destructive Acts via Focused Solar Radiation http://bclee.net/lens.html

Late 90s/early 00s was just too primitive. Mid 00s was pretty good, though.

captpackrat posted...

Kibo's Virtual Reality Tour is still around, though the site is slightly broken. (You have to click on the index.shtml file to make the pages work correctly.) http://www.kibo.com/photos/index.shtml

The Chronicles of George is still available. https://www.chroniclesofgeorge.com/

The Gallery of Regrettable Food is still being updated! http://www.lileks.com/institute/gallery/index.html

Strawberry Pop-Tart Blow-Torches (last updated 1994) https://www.pmichaud.com/toast/

Random Destructive Acts via Focused Solar Radiation http://bclee.net/lens.html

Old Pop Tart design was better.